"'Tis only heaven is given away;
'Tis only God may be had for the asking;
No price is set on the lavish summer;
June may be had by the poorest comer."
* Theodore Parker.
If inspiration were indeed that which it is thought to be by the orthodox Christians, surely we ought to be able to distinguish its sayings from those of the uninspired. If inspiration be confined to the Christian Bible, how is it that the inspired thoughts were in many cases spoken out to the world hundreds of years before they fell from the lips of an inspired Jew? It seems a somewhat uncalled for miraculous interference for a man to be supernaturally inspired to inform the world of some moral truth which had been well known for hundreds of years to a large portion of the race. Or is it that a great moral truth bears within itself so little evidence of its royal birth, that it cannot be accepted as ruler by divine right over men until its proclamation is signed by some duly accredited messenger of the Most High? Then, indeed, must God be "more cognizable by the senses than by the soul;" and then "the eye or the ear is a truer and quicker percipient of Deity than the Spirit which came forth from Him."* Was Paul inspired when he wished himself accursed for his brethren's sake, but Kwan-yin uninspired, when she said, "Never will I seek nor receive private individual salvation; never enter into final peace alone?" If Jesus and the prophets were inspired when they placed mercy above sacrifice, was Manu uninspired in saying that a man "will fall very low if he performs ceremonial acts only, and fails to discharge his moral duties"? Was Jesus inspired when he taught that the whole law was comprehended in one saying, namely, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself?" and yet was Confucius uninspired when, in answer to the question, "What one word would serve as a rule to one's whole life?" he said, "Reciprocity; what you do not wish done to yourself, do not to others." Or take the Talmud and study it, and then judge from what uninspired source Jesus drew much of His highest teaching. "Whoso looketh on the wife of another with a lustful eye, is considered as if he had committed adultery."—(Kalah.) "With what measure we mete, we shall be measured again."—(Johanan.) "What thou wouldst not like to be done to thyself, do not to others; this is the fundamental law."—(Hillel.) "If he be admonished to take the splinter out of his eye, he would answer, Take the beam out of thine own."—(Tarphon.) "Imitate God in His goodness. Be towards thy fellow-creatures as He is towards the whole creation. Clothe the naked; heal the sick; comfort the afflicted; be a brother to the children of thy Father." The whole parable of the houses built on the rock and on the sand is taken out of the Talmud, and such instances of quotation might be indefinitely multiplied. What do they all prove? That there is no inspiration in the Bible? by no means. But surely that inspiration is not confined to the Bible, but is spread over the world; that much in all "sacred books" is the outcome of inspired minds at their highest, although we find the same books containing gross and low thoughts. We should always remember that although the Bible is more specially a revelation to us of the Western nations than are the Vedas and the Zend-Avesta, that it is only so because it is better suited to our modes of thought, and because it has-been one of the agents in our education.
* W. R. Greg.
The reverence with which we may regard the Bible as bound up with many-sacred memories, and as the chosen teacher of many of our greatest minds and purest characters, is rightly directed in other nations to their own sacred books. The books are really all on a level, with much good and much bad in them all; but as the Hebrew was inspired to proclaim that "the Lord thy God is one Lord" to the Hebrews, so was the Hindoo inspired to proclaim to Hindoos, "There is only one Deity, the great Soul." Either all are inspired, or none are. They stand on the same footing. And we rejoice to-believe that one Spirit breathes in all, and that His inspiration is ours to-day. "The Father worketh hitherto," although men fancy He is resting in an eternal Sabbath. The orthodox tells us that, in rejecting the rule of morality laid down for us in the Bible, and in trusting ourselves to this inspiration of the free Spirit of God, our faith and our morality will alike be shifting and unstable. But we reck not of their warnings; our faith and our morality are only shifting in this sense, that, as we grow holier, and purer, and wiser, our conception of God and of righteousness will rise and expand with our growth. It was a golden saying of one of God's noblest sons that "no man knoweth the Father save the Son:" to know God we must resemble Him, as we see in the child the likeness of the parent. But in trusting ourselves to the guidance of the Spirit of God, we are not building the house of our faith on the shifting sand; rather are we "dwelling in a city that hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God." Wisely was it sung of old, "Except the Lord build the house, their labour is but lost that build it." Vain are all efforts of priestly coercion; vain all toils of inspired books; vain the utter sacrifice of reason and conscience; their labour is but lost when they strive to build a temple of human faith, strong enough to bear the long strain of time, or the earthquake-shock of grief. God only, by the patient guiding of His love, by the direct inspiration of His Spirit, can lay, stone by stone, and timber by timber, that priceless fabric of trust and love, which shall outlive all attacks and all changes, and shall stand in the human soul as long as His own Eternity endures.
ON THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF CHILDREN.
IN every transition-stage of the world's history the question of education naturally comes to the front. So much depends on the first impressions of childhood, on the first training of the tender shoot, that it has always been acknowledged, from Solomon to Forster, that to "train up a child in the way he should go" is among the most important duties of fathers and citizens. To the individual, to the family, to the State, the education of the rising generation is a question of primary importance. Plato began the education of the citizens of his ideal Republic from the very hour of their birth; the nursing child was taken from the mother lest injudicious treatment should mar, in the slightest degree, the perfection of the future warrior. On this point modern and ancient wisdom clasp hands, and place the education of the child among the most important duties of the State. The battle at present raging between the advocates of "secular" and "religious" education—to use the cant of the day—is a most natural and righteous recognition of the vast interests at stake when Church or State claims the right of training the sons and daughters of England. No one has yet attempted to explain why it should be "irreligious" to teach writing, or history, or geography; or why it should "destroy a child's soul" to improve his mental faculties. It is among the "mysteries" of the faith, why it is better for our poor to leave' them to grow up in both moral and intellectual darkness, than to dissipate the intellectual darkness by some few rays of knowledge, and to leave the moral training to other hands. If we left a starving man to die because we could only give him bread, and were unable to afford cheese in addition, all would unite in declaiming at our folly: but "religious" people would rather that our street Arabs grew up both heathens and brutes, than that we should improve their minds without Christianizing their souls. Better let a lad grow up a thief and a drunkard, than turn him into an artizan and a freethinker. There can scarcely be a better proof of the unreasonableness of Christian doctrine, than the Christian fear of sharpening mental faculties, without binding them down, at the same time, in the chains of dogma. Only a religion founded on reason can dare to train children's minds to the utmost, and then leave them free to use all the power and keenness acquired by that training on the investigation of any religious doctrine presented to them. We, who have written Tekel on the Christian faith, share in the opinion of the Christian clergy, that man's carnal reason is a terrible foe to the Christian revelation; but here we begin to differ from them, for while they regard this reason as a child of the devil, to be scourged and chained down, we do homage to it as to the fairest offspring of the Divine Spirit, the brightest earthly reflection of His glory, and the nearest image of His "Person"; we would cherish it, tend it, nourish it, as our Father's noblest gift to humanity, as our surest guide and best counsellor, as the ear which hears His voice, and the eye which sees Him, as the sharpest weapon against superstition, the ultimate arbiter on earth between right and wrong. To us, then, education is ranged on the side of God; we welcome it freely and gladly, because all truth, all light, all knowledge, are foes of falsehood, of darkness, of ignorance. If we mistake error for truth a brighter light will set us right, and we only wish to be taught truth, not to be proved right.
Most liberal thinkers agree in recognizing the fact that the duties of the State in the matter of education must, in the nature of things, be purely "secular:" that is to say, that while the State insists that the future citizen shall be taught at least the elements of learning, so as to fit him or her for fulfilling the duties of that citizenship, it has no right to insist on impressing on the mind of its pupil any set of religious dogmas or any form of religious creed. The abdication by the State of the pretended right of enforcing on its citizens any special form of religion, is not at all identical with the opposition by the State to religious teaching; It is merely a development of the very wise maxim of the great Jewish Teacher, to render the things of Caesar to Caesar, and the things of God to God. To teach reading, writing, honesty, regard for law, these things are Caesar's duties; to teach religious dogma, creed, or article, is entirely the province of the teachers who claim to hold the truth of God.
But my object now is not to draw the line between the duties of Church and State, of school and home; nor do I wish to enter the lists of sectarian controversy, to break a lance in favour of a new religious dogma. The question is rather this: "What are the limits of the religious education which it is wise to impose on the young? Is any dogmatic teaching to be a part of their moral training, and is the dogmatism against which we have rebelled to be revived in a new form? Are the fetters which we are breaking for ourselves to be welded together again for the young limbs of our children? Are they to be fed on the husks which have starved our own religious aspirations, and which we have analysed, and rejected as unfit to sustain our moral and mental vigour? On the other hand, are our children to grow up without any religious teaching at all, without a ray of that sunshine which is to most of us the very source of our gladness, and the renewal of our strength?"
I think the best way of deciding this question is to notice the gradual development of the childish body and mind. Nature's indications are a sure guide-post, and we cannot go very far wrong in following her hints. I am now on ground with which mothers are familiar, though perhaps few men have watched young children with sufficient attention to be able to note their gradual development. The first instincts of a baby are purely personal: the "not-I" is for it nonexistent: food, warmth, cleanliness, comprise all its needs and all our duties to it. The next stage is when the infant becomes conscious of the existence of something outside itself: when, vaguely and indistinctly, but yet decidedly, it shows signs of observing the things around it: to cultivate observation, to attract attention, slowly to guide it into distinguishing one object from another, are the next steps in its education. The child soon succeeds in distinguishing forms, and learns to attach different sounds to different shapes: it is also taught to avoid some things and to play with others: it awakes to the knowledge that while some objects give pleasure, others give pain: so far as material things go, it learns to choose the good and to avoid the evil. This power is only gained by experience, and is therefore acquired but gradually, and after a time, side by side with it, runs another lesson; slowly and gradually there appears a dawning appreciation of "right" and "wrong." This appreciation is not, however, at first an appreciation of any intrinsic rightness or wrongness in any given action; it is simply a recognition on the child's part that some of its acts meet with approval, others with disapproval, from its elders. The standard of its seniors is unquestioningly accepted by the child. The moral sense awakes, but is completely guided in its first efforts by the hand of the child's teacher, as completely as the first efforts to walk are directed by the mother. Thus it comes to pass that the conscience of the child is but the reflex of the conscience of its parents or guardians: "right" and "wrong" in a child's vocabulary are in the earliest stages equivalent to "reward" and "punishment;" its final court of appeal in cases of morality is the judgment of the parent.*